No Erin Brockovich, but plenty of drama in Carson

KPCC's Molly Peterson on a Gilligan's Island style tour of environmental stories in and affecting Southern California. Named for the Yvor Winters poem: "The slow Pacific swell stirs on the sand/Sleeping to sink away, withdrawing land..."
Follow the blog at @PacificSwell and Molly at @KPCCmolly.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board held a meeting tonight about an investigation it's opened at the former Kast property site in Carson, CA.

Public officials are raising concerns about whether hazardous and sometimes cancer-causing chemicals have contaminated soil and groundwater in an area about 50 acres big between East 244th Street, Lomita Boulevard, Marbella Avenue and Panama Avenue.

I'll have a full story soon. But I'm including a picture I took in the Carson Community Center for a couple of reasons.

1. Boy, that's a fancy community center!2. It's full of hundreds of people who aren't happy with either Shell or regional water officials.

TV cameras came for a while: these meetings tend not to lend themselves to local news, because terribly impenetrable acronyms pepper the PowerPoints like billboards on Sunset. But dozens of residents have lawyered up, working with Erin Brockovich and the law firm Girardi & Keese. There was a rumor either Mr. Girardi or Ms. Brockovich would provide some fireworks at the meeting.

Neither one did - they weren't there, near as I could tell. But the meeting was plenty dramatic. Video and more on the way.